LinkedIn and other social networks are often hard for executives to get their mental arms around—precisely because business and government have had linear structures, which function very differently than network structures. Reflect on many of the metaphors and concepts on which we depend: supply chains, production lines, value chains, hierarchies: even the notion of a process is usually linear. Our habit of thinking linearly makes networks difficult to deal with, conceptually and practically.
However, society is morphing from linear to networked patterns in almost all dimensions, and, although LinkedIn and other social networks reduce transaction costs, they don’t save us from having to deal with networks. It’s also interesting that the world, say, biological systems, exhibits networked patterns, and humans’ communication and business patterns are just starting to get in synch with that. If we want to be more effective and secure in this environment, the question of the moment is, “How do we make networks work for us?”
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I am pleased to announce that The Executive’s Guide to LinkedIn is going on the road! Our first public seminar will be held on 11 March 2008 at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center. The morning seminar’s focus will be helping executives with underutilized Linkedin accounts to take it to the next level by leveraging our planning methodology as well as LinkedIn’s advanced tools.
LinkedIn is a “social” site that will prove to be of rare benefit to business executives and professionals in building individualized collaborative networks, as I explained in detail in the GHCJ Review of LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn is seriously lacking in providing a step-by-step guide to help the motivated executive to tap its real value. The functionality of the website is easy to use, but many of the finer points of LinkedIn are lost on the majority of users. This guide attempts to address that.
LinkedIn is a social network website that enables people to build and manage (mostly) business connections in order to discover jobs, ventures, new clients, etc. Unlike other social networking sites, its focus is business rather than social or entertainment.